Desirée O / Desirée Ossandon / D. Cole Ossandon

Thief Steals Dali Piece, Then Mails It Back

Yesterday I wrote about the massive Swedish book theft. Today we have someone else with sticky fingers, but this time it was a piece by Salvador Dali that was stolen.

On Tuesday, June 19, [a] defiant thief, posing as a customer, lifted a $150,000 Salvador Dalí watercolor-and-ink painting right off the gallery wall and blithely walked out with it poking out of a black shopping bag.

He’d simply entered the gallery during regular business hours, dressed in a check shirt and black jeans, told the security guard that he wanted to photograph the small “Cartel des Don Juan Tenorio,” a 1949 Dali original that hung advantageously at the back of the dimly lit gallery, waited for the guard to be called away momentarily, and then lifted the piece pretty as you please.